Legal Times' chat with UCLA Law professor Richard Sander is on now. Here's a sampler:

"Professor Sander, my concern is not that the numbers don't add up, but that too many people are going to take your thesis and interpret 'lack of academic credentials' to mean 'lack of academic ability,' in the same manner that most of America interprets 'the problem with urban America' to mean 'the problem with black America.' In addition, I worry that your assertions that blacks would be better served by attending schools that are, um, 'better suited' to them smells awfully like something a segregationist would appreciate. Could you please address these issues?" -- Thomas, University of Michigan Law '03

Sander: "Yes, I've been frustrated that many media reports on the article imply that I believe blacks 'can't compete' in law school. My data shows that the performance problem has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with preferences. That is to say, a white student who gets a large preference (because of alumni connections, for example) has the exact same problems in law school as a black student who gets a large preference. Conversely, blacks who pass up their 'first choice' schools to go to a less elite school have graduation and bar passage rates very similar to (or better than) comparable whites. The problem is putting any student in an environment where all his or her classmates have far higher test scores or undergraduate credentials. Trying to reduce that problem certainly doesn't mean segregating law schools in general and need not segregate any school in particular."